This book is about the music that young portenas/os (the inhabitants of Buenos Aires, Argentina) actually listen to nowadays. Departing from a well entrenched stereotype that equates Buenos Aires with tango, this collection of essays shows that few native Argentines listen to this musical genre on a daily basis, and even fewer dance tango. Based on extensive field work individual chapters address the ways in which cumbia, rock nacional, and romantic music provide young people from different social sectors with both enjoyment and the tools they use for understanding who they are in the aftermath of the traumatic neoliberal experience that brought the country to near total collapse in the early days of the present century. Written from the perspective of the long tradition of sociology and anthropology of music most of the articles use ethnography and content analysis as methods of inquiry. Because there is a huge gap in the market (to date no academically reliable book exists on Argentine popular music, with the exception of those dealing with the fashionable topic of tango) this book will appeal to a quite wide audience. On the one hand to those professors who teach undergraduate and graduate courses on Latin American culture, Latin American music, and sociology and anthropology of music. At the same time the book will appeal to those scholars who do research on those areas. A general audience interested in music, Latin American culture and society will be interested as well because while the chapters are clearly academically oriented they are easy to read.

Table of Contents

Introduction--Pablo Seman and Pablo Vila * Ritual transgression and grotesque realism in 1990s rock music: an ethnographer among the Bersuit--Silvia Citro * 'Rockers': Moral limits in the construction of musical communities--Jose Garriga Zucal * Cumbia Villera and the end of the work culture in Argentina in the 90's--Eloisa Martin * Cumbia and Latin-American migration in Buenos Aires, Argentina: Identity negotiation processes in two ethnic/national dance halls--Pablo Vila and Malvina Silba * Cumbia villera or the complex construction of masculinity and femininity in contemporary Argentina--Pablo Seman and Pablo Vila * Catholic inflections and female complicities: Syncretism in a "fan club" in Buenos Aires - Guadalupe Gallo, Pablo Seman, and Carolina Spataro * Pleasurable Surfaces: Sex, Religion and Electronic Music within the 1990-2010 transition folds--Guadalupe Gallo and Pablo Seman * 'RESCATE' and its consequences: Culture and religion only in singular - Guadalupe Gallo and Pablo Seman

About the Author

PABLO FEDERICO SEMAN is Professor at El Colegio de Mexico. PABLO VILA is Professor in the Department of Sociology at Temple University, USA.

Reviews

"An intriguing exploration of multiple conjunctures and disjunctures in the unpredictable relationships between identity and music, the chapters in this volume consistently surprise the reader by demonstrating how endless innovation and creativity produce unexpected musical fusions, which nevertheless 'make sense' when seen in retrospect and from the point of view of the music-makers and their audiences." - Peter Wade, author of Music, Race and Nation: Musica Tropical in Colombia